Aging in another place

A Summer University of the Arts class by Stefan Göllner and Jan Lindenberg.

How can we design for mobility, health care and community life to enable aging in context following an extended understanding of place?

Background
Urban life is expected to change radically when a massive generation of old people will dominate society in the near future. Aging in place is a popular concept in the field of design and technology development targeting this expectation: aiming for interventions to improve the conditions for staying in a living environment for a long as possible.

Process
To tackle this question we are looking beyond negative prophecies of »alarmist demography« and positivist technology inspired concepts by exploring theoretical and practical knowledge related with the needs and constraints of aging.
Our research will be inspired by various fields like health care and gerontology, research in information systems and the social sciences, anthropology or transhumanism, cultural traditions, fiction and science fiction – and everything the participants contribute to enrich the scope of the concept of »Aging In Place«.

Guests and Collaborators
Five experts from different fields and countries joined us in person and by Skype Calls for presentations and discussions to enrich our background knowledge about the topic (Deane Simpson, Michael Ballasch, Till Beutling, Stephanie Hannah and Wilhelm Klauser).

Outcomes
Students, researchers and professionals from different fields were invited to join this process, aiming for a multi perspective view on the topic. We followed a mixed method approach to design research by assembling insights from textual sources, field excursions, scenario development and on-site interventions.

We were collecting the results and findings systematically in an Index / Sampler / Cross-Media Glossary which became the core result of the workshop. In advance, registered participants were invited to join a preliminary process of material collection in preparation of the workshop.